Ernst Cassirer | |
|---|---|
 Cassirerc. 1935 | |
| Born | Ernst Alfred Cassirer (1874-07-28)July 28, 1874 |
| Died | April 13, 1945(1945-04-13) (aged 70) New York City, U.S. |
| Education | |
| Education | University of Marburg (PhD, 1899) University of Berlin (Dr. phil. habil., 1906) |
| Theses | |
| Academic advisors | Hermann Cohen Paul Natorp |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Neo-Kantianism (Marburg School) |
| Institutions | Yale University Columbia University |
| Main interests | Epistemology,aesthetics,semiotics,history of philosophy |
| Notable ideas | Philosophy of symbolic forms Animal symbolicum |
Ernst Alfred Cassirer (/kɑːˈsɪərər,kəˈ-/kah-SEER-ər, kə-;[1]German:[ˈɛʁnstkaˈsiːʁɐ];[2][3] July 28, 1874 – April 13, 1945) was a German philosopher and historian of philosophy. Trained within theNeo-Kantian Marburg School, he initially followed his mentorHermann Cohen in attempting to supply an idealisticphilosophy of science.
After Cohen's death in 1918, Cassirer developed atheory of symbolism and used it to expand the "logic and psychology of thought" into a more general "logic of the cultural sciences". Cassirer was one of the leading 20th-century advocates of philosophicalidealism. His most famous work is thePhilosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923–1929).
Though his work received a mixed reception shortly after his death, more recent scholarship has remarked upon Cassirer's role as a strident defender of themoral idealism of theEnlightenment era and the cause ofliberal democracy at a time when the rise offascism had made such advocacy unfashionable. Within the international Jewish community, Cassirer's work has additionally been seen as part of a long tradition of thought onethical philosophy.[4]
Cassirer was born inBreslau inSilesia (modern-day southwest Poland) into aJewish family. After graduating fromJohannesgymnasium Breslau he studied Jurisprudence atFriedrich Wilhelms Universität Berlin andLeipzig University, Germanic Philology, Contemporary Literary History, and Philosophy atRuprecht Karls Universität Heidelberg andFriedrich Wilhelms Universität Berlin, and Philosophy and Psychology atLudwig Maximilian University of Munich. He then did his doctoral work at theUniversity of Marburg where he studied Philosophy underHermann Cohen andPaul Natorp and Mathematics underFriedrich Schottky.[5] In 1899 he graduated with adissertation onRené Descartes's analysis of mathematical and natural scientific knowledge entitledDescartes' Kritik der mathematischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis (Descartes' Critique of Mathematical and Scientific Knowledge) and completed hishabilitation in 1906 at theUniversity of Berlin with the dissertationDas Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit: Erster Band (The Problem of Knowledge in Philosophy and Science in the Modern Age: Volume I).[6]
Politically, Cassirer supported the liberalGerman Democratic Party (DDP).[7] After working for many years as aPrivatdozent at theFriedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, Cassirer was elected in 1919 to the philosophy chair at the newly foundedUniversity of Hamburg, where he lectured until 1933, supervising amongst others the doctoral theses ofJoachim Ritter andLeo Strauss. On 30 January 1933, theNazi Regimecame to power. Cassirer left Germany on 12 March 1933 – one week after the firstReichstagswahl under that Regime – because he was Jewish.[8]
After leaving Germany he taught for a couple of years at theUniversity of Oxford, before becoming a professor atUniversity of Gothenburg. When Cassirer considered Sweden too unsafe, he applied for a post atHarvard University, but was rejected because thirty years earlier he had rejected a job offer from them.[citation needed] In 1941 he became a visiting professor atYale University, then moved toColumbia University in New York City, where he lectured from 1943 until his death in 1945.
Cassirer died of a heart attack in April 1945 in New York City. The young rabbiArthur Hertzberg, who was a student of Cassirer's at Columbia University, conducted the funeral service.[9] His grave is located inWestwood, New Jersey, on theCedar Park Beth–El Cemeteries in the graves of the Congregation Habonim. His son,Heinz Cassirer, was also a Kantian scholar.
Other members of his prominent family included theneurologistRichard Cassirer, the publisher and gallery ownerBruno Cassirer and theart dealer and editorPaul Cassirer.
Donald Phillip Verene, who published some of Cassirer's papers kept atYale University, gave this overview of his ideas:
"Cassirer as a thinker became an embodiment ofKantian principles, but also of much more, of an overall movement of spirit stretching fromthe Renaissance tothe Enlightenment, and on toHerder's conception of history,Goethe's poetry,Wilhelm von Humboldt's study of theKavi language,Schelling'sPhilosophie der Mythologie,Hegel'sPhenomenology of Spirit, and Vischer's conception of theaestheticsymbol, among many others. Cassirer's own position is born through a mastery of the whole development of this world of thehumanistic understanding, which included the rise of thescientific world view — a mastery evident both in his historical works and in hissystematic philosophy."[10]
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Cassirer's first major published writings were ahistory of modern thought fromthe Renaissance toKant. In accordance with his Marburgneo-Kantianism he concentrated uponepistemology. His reading of theScientific Revolution, in books such asThe Individual and theCosmos inRenaissance Philosophy (1927), as a "Platonic" application of mathematics to nature, influenced historians such asE. A. Burtt,E. J. Dijksterhuis, andAlexandre Koyré.
InSubstance and Function (1910), he writes about late nineteenth-century developments in physics includingrelativity theory and thefoundations of mathematics. InEinstein's Theory of Relativity (1921) he defended the claim that modern physics supports a neo-Kantianconception of knowledge. He also wrote a book aboutQuantum mechanics calledDeterminism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics (1936).
At Hamburg Cassirer discovered the Library of the Cultural Sciences founded byAby Warburg. Warburg was an art historian who was particularly interested in ritual and myth as sources of surviving forms of emotional expression. InPhilosophy of Symbolic Forms [de] (1923–29) Cassirer argues that man (as he put it in his more popular 1944 bookEssay on Man) is a "symbolic animal". Whereas animals perceive their world byinstincts and directsensory perception, humans create a universe ofsymbolic meanings. Cassirer is particularly interested in natural language and myth. He argues that science and mathematics developed from natural language, and religion and art from myth.
In 1929 Cassirer took part in a historically significant encounter withMartin Heidegger inDavos during the SecondDavos Hochschulkurs (theCassirer–Heidegger debate). Cassirer argues that while Kant'sCritique of Pure Reason emphasizes humantemporality andfinitude, he also sought to situatehuman cognition within a broader conception of humanity. Cassirer challenges Heidegger'srelativism by invoking the universal validity oftruths discovered by the exact and moral sciences.
Cassirer believed that reason'sself-realization leads to human liberation.Mazlish (2000)[citation needed], however, notes that Cassirer in hisThe Philosophy of the Enlightenment (1932) focuses exclusively on ideas, ignoring the political and social context in which they were produced.
InTheLogic of the Cultural Sciences (1942) Cassirer argues that objective and universalvalidity can be achieved not only in the sciences, but also in practical,cultural, moral, andaestheticphenomena. Although inter-subjective objective validity in thenatural sciences derives from universallaws of nature, Cassirer asserts that an analogous type ofinter-subjective objective validity takes place in the cultural sciences.
Cassirer's last work,The Myth of the State (1946), was published posthumously; at one level it is an attempt to understand theintellectual origins ofNazi Germany. Cassirer sees Nazi Germany as a society in which the dangerous power ofmyth is not checked or subdued by superior forces. The book discusses the opposition oflogos andmythos in Greek thought,Plato'sRepublic, themedieval theory ofthe state,Machiavelli,Thomas Carlyle's writings onhero worship, theracial theories ofArthur de Gobineau, andHegel. Cassirer claimed that in 20th-century politics there was a return, with the passive acquiescence ofMartin Heidegger, to the irrationality of myth, and in particular to a belief that there is such a thing asdestiny. Of this passive acquiescence, Cassirer says that in departing from Husserl's belief in an objective, logical basis for philosophy, Heidegger attenuated the ability of philosophy to oppose the resurgence of myth inGerman politics of the 1930s.
The Myth of the State discusses the surrender ofrationallogic to fascist mythology.[11]: 62 Cassirer wrote that while fascistpropaganda mythmaking flagrantly contradicted empirical reality, it provided a simple and direct answer to the anxieties of thesecular present.[11]: 63
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